I’ve been submitting sound effects to Audiojungle about a month and a half now. It takes some time to get in to and I’ve only just realised that Audiojungle is more focused on music than sound effects. I knew there was something in the corner of my eye and finally I see it clearly.

I read this great thread (focused on music) by scottwillis and started to think about the bargain basement, when it came to me. It clearly says “Great music at discounted, bargain prices”. Aha, no sound effects at discounted prices? Yes, I’ve seen sound effects there but if you don’t promote that then buyers will only expect music.

Then there’s the menu items. We have 8 categories. 2 are general, 5 are about music and only one are focused on sound effects. Even if you wanted to submit a source file focused on sound design there is no obvious sub-category to choose. What would it be, ambient?

The other day I found the music player. Great tool which I use on my website, but shouldn’t it be an audio player? I don’t play music with it at all.

What about sub-categories? 22 choices for music, 14 for sound effects. Even the sub-categories in music has sub-categories. None for sound effects. That is maybe one of the strangest choices since the diversity of sound effects are that much bigger. The least you could expect is an equal amount.

I haven’t been around long enough to know if Audiojungle promotes sound effects as well but take a look at the front page now.

Naturally I don’t use this example to say that the authors don’t deserve to be there, they are all talented. I’m just saying that half of that space belongs to sound effects.

Maybe the most controversial of my arguments is the comparison with other stock sites. Look at most of them and you’ll see an equal amount of focus on both sound effects and music. The result is more sound effects than music tracks. Sometimes twice as much. As it should be. I can make a quality mouth pop sound effect in under an hour. About 15 minutes to get the right pop, 15 minutes of editing to make it as perfect as possible. Then add the watermark and submit. If that was creating music, if I’m lucky, I might have come up with a nice base line. As a result, music is more expensive, which of course is more than fair.

So, one of the reasons why Audiojungle, while comparing with other stock sites, has more music tracks than sound effects is not because of the lack of talented authors. It’s probably because of the fact that the site itself focuses more on music than sound effects. Would it be an equal focus, we would probably see a vast increase in people submitting quality sfx and everyone would benefit.

Before you rage away, consider that I love it here. There is a reason why I tried Audiojungle together with other stock sites and then decided to focus only on this awesome place. The Envato Marketplace prides itself with quality items, a great design, professional reviewers and much much more. I only hope for a change of focus on audio as a whole, not primarily music.

good observations! perhaps because there is a higher price tag on the music items then the majority of income comes through music sales so they promote it more. To be honest I don’t think there are half as many sound designers here as there are composers so maybe that’s another reason why.

In my honest opinion there isn’t a lot of emphasis on sfx because the sfx library is quite lacking compared to most. So there is a lot of room for growth as well as the possibility for great success if you become the top sfx composer.

Good observations indeed! I’ve also noticed it, but never formed the thought in my head so clearly to write such post as yours But now that I’ve read it, I totally agree with you – SFX needs more attention.

I’ve been here a bit longer than you, but I still can’t recall any SFX author being featured. And only one featured SFX file in many months…

It was far from obvious. I don’t think I’m the only one who thought about this, but sometimes things are hard to grasp. You just wonder why the sfx category aren’t selling that well and think it’s because of your lack of self-promotion.

liambradbury
Thanks! Right now there are 34.706 items under Music and 7.402 Sound Effects. Then I’m not even counting Music Packs but it does include Sound Packs. The question is why there are more composers here than sound designers? Perhaps the answer is just “because”, but I think some of it lies in the fact that Audiojungle chooses to focus more on music. Because of that the sales are good, which in turn attracts more composers.

thesecession
I agree that we have fewer sound effects here on AJ than other stock sites, but there are definitely no problem with the quality nor talent. Let’s assume that Envato choose not to create more sub-categories because there are not enough sound effects. Then take a look at Source Files. Lot’s of empty space. You even have the opportunity now to be the first to submit a Pro Tools Source File.

Another reason why there are fewer sound effects here than other stock sites are because of the limitations Audiojungle has on submitting. Take a look at Files We Do and Don’t Need: We are currently accepting music across all genres.

Let’s take a look at Clocks: Ticking as an example. One of the most accessible sound for anyone to record. I happened to overlook that and submitted a wall clock ticking. Rejected. Searching for “clock ticking” generates 44 results with the most succesful sound at 79 sales. Hardly fits in neither “oversaturation” nor “lack of demand”. Search for “wall clock ticking” and it generates 2 results. Too many?

Another mistake I made in the beginning was to submit a water running sound. It was accepted, but at the same time I was asked not to submit any more water flowing sounds. That was a lucky shot since it sold almost instantly. Searching for “water flowing” generates 39 results. Is that a lot?

urbazon
You are one of the talented sound designers that I’m talking about. Hopefully we will see some changes in the future. Envato staff claim to read the forums and take all opinions into consideration. I believe that to be true. Again, Envato prides itself with great staff.

Here’s a simple breakdown of my wishlist

Let Audiojungle be a place for both sound effects and music with equal exposure and space

Change the Music Player to an Audio Player

Create a Sound Design sub-category under Source Files/DAW

Expand both the Sound Effects categories and sub-categories

Change Bargain Basement from “Great music at discounted, bargain prices” to something like “Great music and sound effects at discounted, bargain prices”

Re-iterate the “Files we do and don’t need” and consider opening up for variations of the unwanted sound effects

Thanks for taking the time to read this. I wish you all a merry merry christmas!

Reachground saidurbazon
You are one of the talented sound designers that I’m talking about. Hopefully we will see some changes in the future. Envato staff claim to read the forums and take all opinions into consideration. I believe that to be true. Again, Envato prides itself with great staff.

(blush)

On a more serious note, you’ve summed it all up in your last post. I hope that staff will really take those points into consideration. Keeping my fingers crossed

SFX could be amazing on Audio Jungle and compete with anyone if they wanted to…..

I guess Envato would need to build up a HUGE library to provide Audio Post Production companies with choice. Water running, maybe have a load of choices. This is how the biggest libraries do it, they provide their clients with a huge choice, as these people need EVERYTHING !

I would almost think sound effects should be branched off to it’s own site. I think that people shopping for SFX and people shopping for music are two different sort of customers, and the nature of the files would benefit from different treatment on a website. SFX seem akin stock photos whereas music is like website templates or some of the stuff on GraphicRiver. Notice how Photodune has some differences from the other Envato sites since photos are small, cheap, quick to make, and more numerous, like SFX .

And I think Envato could go further in their differentiation of the websites. Consistency and familiarity are nice but different products deserve different treatment in terms of page layout, widgets, item sorting and recommending, etc. Especially when it comes to big items versus small items.

Sorry about the late reply. I survived the holidays (barely, as I was driving an old car on icy roads) and now I’m back to work. It really is a difference coming back to work when you do something you love

Catch22Music
Thanks a lot! I’m happy I’m not alone. Since I’m mainly into sound design I keep a close look at the new sfx on AJ. There are a lot of good stuff coming through. But yes, if Audiojungle is going to be a serious competitor to the big sfx libraries they have to grow, a lot. I don’t see that happening though as long as the sound effect side of AJ is being this limited.

I’m a provider of stock audio, and at the same time I’m a sound designer and musician. That being said, I sometimes take on the responsibility as audio director for a product. I’m being given a budget and asked to create a strategy on how to get the most bang for the buck. Since I’ve been working with this for a couple of years now I can almost always create quality sound effects within budget. Ok, to be honest I have put some sfx straight from the box due to time limits, but at the minimum I try to pitch the sounds ^^

It’s a different story when it comes to music. Most of my commercial games are for iOS and to get it right this is the absolute minimum: Menu music, in-game music and one random (win, lose, credits, intro etc). I’m not the fastest music producer in the world and that would sometimes take me over the budget. That’s when I dive into the libraries. First I check my own library, second I go on the Internetz. And then I end up here for instance.

To summarize, I think that they are the same costumers. Not all of the time but most of the time. That’s why I think that keeping Audiojungle intact while expanding the possibilty to expose your sfx is the way to go. If Envato decides to split it up it would at least be better than it is now, where sfx are drowning in music.

I’d like to add something that I hadn’t thought of before. To submit the audio in stereo. I don’t see the reason. Probably to push the quality on music, and then it gets enforced on sound effects automatically. I’m not saying it’s entirely wrong but at least for games it’s totally unnecessary. Small games like iOS and other handheld devices has very limited memory and stereo is unthinkable. I still remember one game that I scored fully, mixed and mastered to perfection, only to end up with a low quality ADPCM -compressed file. I almost cried.

Even AAA productions use a lot of mono files. Not for ambiances and such, but the audio in 3D space can only emit from one source. Hence mono again.

Allow me to end this seemingly endless post with a look at the front page again.

- Weekly Features, 4 music tracks
- Featured Author, a musician

I was very happy to see the “Christmas & Holiday Audio”. Not music, audio. When I looked through the files though there were only music .

I know this is kind of a suggestion section but I’d love to hear from someone at Envato. If the focus of Audiojungle is and will continue to be music, that would be great to know. Then again, if there is a slight chance that we at least will be getting more sub-sections to Sound Effects and at least one section under Source Files. then we (yes I am the representative of all sound effects producers ) will cheer at a volume that will be heard all the way to Australia.

Thanks so much for the suggestions and feedback, it’s very kind of you to spend time sharing your thoughts. I’ve only now found out about this thread via an e-mail you sent support so I would be glad to provide some answers and responses.

Sound Effects Category Tree: I think that’s an excellent point. When we first started out, the few categories we had served us well. But now we have over 7,000 items, perhaps it’s time to improve the category tree for Sound Effects? Expand them a little to make organization and navigation easier for customers? We’re actually going to be making some tweaks to the Music category so it makes sense to include sound effects too. Leave it with us.

Submissions: I think part of what I read in the above comments was saying that not many people submit sound effects to AudioJungle. This is simply not true. We have approved over 300+ in the past 2 weeks alone. And we’ve probably rejected at least double that amount in the same period. So there is definitely an interest in authors submitting SFX to us.

Quality: Just as the quality of items in the Music category has grown, so has the quality of Sound Effects. This is why it’s slightly harder to get sound effects approved these days because the bar is so much higher. We even have several items in the Files We Do Not Need/Want list that authors should read before submitting Sound Effects. We either have too many of the items in that list already or we’re really looking for super high quality sound effects the tare above and beyond what we already have. Very basic field recordings, button clicks and pops etc… just won’t make the cut. Likewise, does any music library really need 10,000 different button click sounds when the majority sound the same? We try to focus on quality rather than volume of items on AudioJungle.

Sound Effects “not as important” as Music: Sound Effects are very important to AudioJungle, BUT , the reality of the situation is that customers mostly come here to purchase Music. Although I can’t give actual figures, sales data for sound effects each month is quite steady, we sell thousands of sound effects each month (not hundreds), if that gives you some perspective. So our sales data shows that sound effects do sell, there is a demand for them, and some authors have recognized this by concentrating on producing and selling sound effects on AudioJungle. From a business perspective however for both Envato AND authors, Music quantity completely outsells Sound Effects and that’s quite understandable given the direction of AudioJungle.

Sound Effect Features: We’ve featured some authors in the past who predominantly focus on sound effects. We’ve even featured sound effects as Files of the Week. We’ve even had sound effect collections featured on the home page recently (Game Sounds and Science Fiction sounds springs to mind). We also have one or two authors who frequently appear in the monthly Popular Authors chart who have sound effects in their portfolio. So there are things we are doing to help promote Sound Effects, I disagree that the category is being totally ignored. Again, the reality is that we will continue to focus more on Music than Sound Effects where home page features are concerned because that’s what’s most popular, that’s what sells most, and that’s what customers are mostly looking for. Unless there’s a really, really high quality sound effect or pack of sounds, it’s unlikely to get featured on the home page because, a $1 sound effect of a bell for example is not going to suddenly increase the demand for it just because it’s on the home page. Simultaneously, look at any online retailer – they are unlikely to feature the very cheapest product on their home page as a feature because they would have to sell HUGE volumes to justify having it there. That’s why Apple have their hardware on their home page and not a dock or a cable; that’s why Amazon have a Kindle on their home page and not $1 items. Hopefully that makes sense.

Home page Exposure:This comes up time and time again, but, just because it’s not on the home page, it doesn’t mean it’s not there. Someone coming here looking for a particular song effect can still find it via search or looking in the Sound Effects category.

Audio Player Does Not Play Sound Effects: That’s not true. Simply create a collection and then link to the collection. You can test it out here.

Discounted Sound Effect Prices: 99% of sound effects are priced $1. We can’t discount $1 unfortunately, that’s as low as our system allows for the price of an item. We used to have items available for “0.5 credits” back when sound effects were part of FlashDen back in 2006, but things have changed since then. Wow, that really takes me back just thinking about that actually!

I hope I have not forgotten to respond to anything, but I hope that answers your questions and clarifies any concerns you have. What I will say however in conclusion is that asking us to TRY to feature more Sound Effects and Sound Effect authors is a really good suggestion and we’ll try to do that. I have an author in mind whose sound effects I’ve been really impressed with recently and I will share it with Adrien, the Senior Reviewer, who sets the Featured Items. I also think another Sound Effects collection on the home page is a great idea, we’ll do that too. Finally, one extra piece of good news/info, we’ve been talking behind the scenes recently about trying to improve the Sound Effects category. This is mostly to do with category growth and getting more Sound Effects, but we will also look at improving the category tree as previously mentioned. That’s all I can share at this moment in time.

Again, really appreciate the feedback and suggestions, Reachground, and to everyone else who offered thoughts. Thanks so much!

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